Catch up continued...

Then these pictures are from the ward Christmas party. This year 2010, Sydney asked Santa for a pillow pet. He brought her the one that looks like a ladybug.Then right after Christmas comes Sydney's birthday. Her 5 year old party was a costume party. Her friends came dressed in costumes, then in these pictures we used 2 of our Halloween costumes to do a relay race in. There were 2 teams and they each had to put their team's costume on then pose for a picture. I don't remember which team won, it was probably the pirate costume team because most of the people on that team were a little older. These pictures are of her friends Jackson, (in his ninja costume under the pirate costume) and Molly (in the Elmo costume). Her other friends that are in the pictures are Landon, Allison, Janie and Makenzie.
Jackson and Stephan got along well as we dressed them up as marshmellow men!

1 year catch up!

Wow, I have not posted for over a year! I converted just over to Facebook, so if you follow me on that, none of this will really be news to you. I want to post so that I can do a blog book to substitute for my journal, since I haven't kept up with that either:)

This is a picture of Eran and Sydney last Oct. at the pumpkin patch we went to.

Sydney constantly tortures the dogs by playing dress up with them. Here is Cal with a bow on his ear. Then she wonders why the dogs run away from her and don't do her commands that she gives them...

She went to one more year of preschool. I can't believe that now she is starting Kindergarten next week. Thanks to the curriculum at this school, and a little hard work at home and just being smart, she is close to being on a 1st grade reading level!

I take my sister Holly's kids photos every year for their birthdays. Sydney usually has to pose with the birthday cousin in at least one photo. This is one of her favorite cousins Stephan.

Then we went to Texas for Thanksgiving where Sydney got to see more of her favorite cousins. Here she is standing between Carly and Brandon in front of some strange Texan's property. They have reindeer (in the picture), camels, zebras, and other zoo like animals. Here she is terrified to be feeding the camels.

Dylan's bday and the zoo

So we had a fun trip to the zoo this summer. I can't even really remember when it was, I just know it was hot! Sydney was so excited about the giraffes and was sorely disappointed about the Hogle Zoo's lack of zebras. The baby elephant was very cute too.

Then we also celebrated Dylan's birthday. I spent a few hours at the temple which gave me a lot of peace for the day. Then we went to his grave and let Sydney and cousin Carly let go of helium balloons to "send them to heaven" for him. We also had an angel food cake. I included a picture of his headstone because I know many have not been able to come see it yet. Thank you again Seth for the amazing picture. I tried to get a picture of the girls letting go of the balloons, but Carly let go too quickly, and we had to really encourage Sydney several times to let go of hers.

camping fun

So we always have a good time at Eran's family's annual camping trip, and this year was no exception:) Sydney was much more social this year than in years past, so she had fun with second cousins while 4 wheeling and in the hammock as you see in some of the pictures.

She also ensured we made plenty of smores for her at the campfire every night we were there, and she wasn't very afraid of the many bugs as is seen in the caterpillar on her hand shot. We even went out on a bug catching walk once! You can see her slightly swollen eye from a mosquito bite she got in the picture of her by the stream - ah the many joys of camping!
I can't believe I haven't taken a picture of my smashed up 4 wheeler. Zach crashed when he got panicked because he got a little lost. We were super thankful he didn't get badly hurt, just a few scrapes, and Eran's cousins and uncle helped him un-bend the 4 wheeler so it was still ride-able. I'll have to go take a picture of it before it gets completely fixed though because they used zip ties to fix the broken plastic and my bike looks a little like frankenstein. That will be a picture for my next post on my blog...

There is also this picture of her at soccer practice that a nice girl in my ward did for kids her age for a few weeks. I love good nice neighbors!

Exciting day for pets!

Some of you may have seen this on facebook, but we have had excitement going on with our pets. One of the black molly fish I just bought had 13 babies! We went from having 3 black fish to now 16! We also had our dogs shaved for the summer. I wanted to see how much it might help our shedding issues in our house. I included before and after pictures for the dogs.

Way to go Zach!

Zach has been anticipating this day since before we met him. He graduated from high school! Now he is very eager to move out and be a full fledged adult, but we don't think that will be happening anytime soon. I know the team of people who help Zach make decisions are encouraging him to stay with us for at least another year... we'll see what happens.

small catch-up

So I finally downloaded my 2010 pictures from my camera. I said in my last post that I didn't feel like playing catch-up, but there were some fun pictures to share, so here I go...This is Cal after we had some hot cocoa with whip cream on top. He and Sunny love to catch the whip cream in their mouths as it shoots out of the can. An action shot of that would have been funnier, but show me someone who can shoot a picture and whip cream at the same time and I'll be impressed.



Then Zach turned the big 18. We took him to IHOP, and that is a Ben 10 cake he requested. We are still not quite sure what is going on with him after graduation in May, but everyone (except him) is in agreement he is not ready to move out yet.

We have had a slow start to spring, and this is Syd with a very late season snowman. The thing that cracked me up about this snowman, was that as we were putting the face on, I explained to her that the nose is usually under the eyes. In her drawings, the nose and eyes are currently aligned. Then when I tried to put the arms in the snowman's middle, she protested and said, "Mom, arms start up here (pointing to her shoulder) not in the middle!" I couldn't argue with that:)Many of you have seen the sorry shape of Sydney's baby blanket. She proudly put it on display here in front of her favorite show. She is nearly ready to retire it though because she realizes how it does not keep her warm like other blankets do. She even moved on to a blanket she got when she was in the hospital last month with pneumonia.
Then we finally got to go 4wheeling this year. The weather actually cooperated. This is at the bottom of some mine trailings in the West Desert. Hooray for spring! Let's pray it stays!